You Chose To Be a Victim

Never give the pen to the victim. This is the first rule of understanding human narrative. When you grant a victim the ability to write their own story, you receive nothing but a carefully curated fiction of self-preservation where they are always the hero, forever innocent, forever wronged.

The victim is a master storyteller only of their own novel. They craft narratives, carefully edit out their own failures and their own complicity. Every chapter becomes an alibi, every paragraph a shield against personal responsibility. Give them the pen, and watch how quickly the world transforms into a conspiracy designed solely to oppress them.

Remember: there are no victims, only volunteers. People actively choose their state of suffering. It is a choice disguised as circumstance.

Think about someone trapped in an “abusive” relationship. They are not a victim, they are a volunteer. They have volunteered to remain in a situation that confirms their deepest, most tragic belief about themselves: that they are fundamentally unlovable, that they deserve nothing more than the cruelty they receive. They believe only another broken person could love them, and so they cling to this broken love.

The same principle applies to professional stagnation. The person waiting to be a DEI hire is not a victim of systemic inequality, they are a volunteer for mediocrity. They volunteer to be passive, to wait for an external force to validate their worth, rather than taking the risk of proving their own value. Starting a business, pursuing genuine excellence, these require a level of agency they are unwilling to embrace.

Small-town inhabitants who never venture beyond their provincial boundaries are not trapped, they are volunteers. They volunteer for a limited existence, choosing the comfort of familiar mediocrity over the potential terror of genuine challenge. It is easier to remain a big fish in a tiny, insignificant pond than to risk being exposed as average in a larger ecosystem.

The high-agency individual understands this fundamental truth. For them, the very concept of victimhood is an embarrassment. They do not negotiate with circumstances; they transform them. Where others see obstacles, they see opportunities. Where victims see limitations, they see blank canvases waiting to be reshaped by individual will.

Personal responsibility is not a concept, it is a fundamental law of existence. Your life is the culmination of every decision you have ever made.

It is a choice. And as with all choices, there are consequences. To embrace victimhood is to embrace stasis, to rot while the world moves on without you. Radical responsibility, on the other hand, is not a guarantee of success, but it is, at the very least, a way to meet the world on your own terms.

You are either the author of your existence or a footnote in someone else's story.

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